Nguyen Duc Thai, former chairman of state-owned Vietnam Education Publishing House, some of his subordinates, and leaders of two firms were charged with taking and giving bribes, and colluding with one another to hike textbook prices, according to an indictment recently issued by the Supreme People's Procuracy of Vietnam.

After taking on the role of chairman of the publishing house in 2017, Thai met with executives from two companies who requested his assistance in securing contracts to supply paper for textbook printing, offering him 'gifts' in exchange for his support.

Previously, the publishing house held competitive bids for paper procurement.

However, after Thai’s appointment, he assumed full control over these procurement decisions.

According to the indictment, Thai accepted nearly VND25 billion (US$983,800) in bribes to ensure that Phung Vinh Hung Paper JSC and Minh Cuong Phat Paper Company received favorable conditions to supply paper for textbook production.

While in office, Thai directed his subordinates to conduct illegally simplified bidding processes to make it hard for qualified paper suppliers, but facilitated Phung Vinh Hung and Minh Cuong Phat’s success in winning bids.

The indictment notes that paper purchases for printing are a standard procedure at the publishing house, funded through its business capital.

However, the inflated costs of these paper procurements directly raised textbook prices, placing a financial burden on parents for years.

With Thai’s support, Phung Vinh Hung Paper JSC secured three bidding packages worth over VND282 billion ($11.1 million) in 2017, so To My Ngoc, then-chairwoman of the firm, offered bribes totaling VND3 billion ($117,800) to Thai.

From late 2018 to 2021, Thai was accused of accepting VND16 billion ($629,860) from the chairwoman of Phung Vinh Hung.

During the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday over the five consecutive years from 2018 to 2022, Ngoc gave VND200 million ($7,860) to Thai.

As such, he was charged with taking a total of VND20 billion ($786,960) from the leader of Phung Vinh Hung between 2017 and 2022, easing the company’s gaining 13 packages valued at over VND2.1 trillion ($82.5 million).

Thai was also charged with taking VND4.9 billion ($192,590) from Nguyen Tri Minh, director of Minh Cuong Phat, and instructing his subordinates to legitimize bidding procedures to create favorable conditions for the company to secure bids from 2017 to 2020.

Textbook prices are unreasonable

Investigators found that printing paper costs comprised up to 40 percent of textbook prices, meaning the high paper prices significantly drove up textbook costs.

They recommended that the Ministry of Education and Training introduce regulations to oversee routine paper procurement at the publishing house, ensuring transparent and fair bidding processes.

The Government Inspectorate had previously found that the publishing house sold three types of paper for printing with a value-added tax of five percent to bidding winners to print textbooks.

However, when setting the maximum prices for printing contracts, the publishing house increased the value-added tax on printing paper to 10 percent.

This tax hike on the three types of paper inflated textbook prices, resulting in parents paying an additional VND14.8 billion ($582,740) for their children's textbooks.

The Government Inspectorate affirmed that the violations in selecting paper suppliers, printing service providers, and textbook sales led to an unreasonable spike in the prices of textbooks.

The state-run publishing house specializes in compiling, editing, publishing, printing, and distributing textbooks, electronic versions, maps, educational equipment and tools, and notebooks.

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